Henry Morselli

“ To our mind, therefore, the great number of suicides is to be attributed to the state of compromise which the human mind occupies at the present time between the metaphysical and the positivist phase of civilization, and as this transition is more active in countries of marked mystic and metaphysical tendencies, such as is the case with Protestantism, it is natural that in them suicide should have the greatest number of victims. ”

“ The influence of Paris is such as altogether to neutralize that of religion; but, for so considerable a rise in the average of the northeast of France, we must take into account the introduction of the Germanic ethnical element, for there the religious apathy which springs from the habits of our times has not yet taken sufficient effect to tell upon statistics. ”

“ As a matter of theory we can not deny the truth of this conclusion of Legoyt, as we well know how the spirit of association and the earnestness of religious convictions increase in proportion to the isolation into which any given congregation is cast when in the minority in a country. This influence of the surrounding atmosphere on religion is proved by the persistence and tenacity of the transmission of the Mosaic law through so many ages and migrations, and may explain the small tendency toward suicide among Jews. ”

“ It is true that the people called Latins have remained faithful to Catholicism, while the reform of religious thought was the exclusive work of the Anglo-Germans; but it is likewise true that, in countries of mixed religions, statistics have always shown the hurtful or beneficial effect of each. At first sight it is indeed perceived that the purely Catholic nations, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, stand on the last step of the scale of suicide, while those exclusively or mostly Protestant take the first grade ”

“ THE influences of religion are, together with the influence of race, the strongest motive powers which act on the will of man. The discussion as to whether the growth of suicide is to be accounted for by the decrease of religious sentiment scarcely finds place in a work like this. ”

“ With regard to suicide, on the other hand, the Jews of various countries differ more among themselves than Catholics from Protestants, who maintain a certain relative proportion with little variation. Great anthropological and social diversities are indeed to be observed between the Jews of Poland, Galicia, and Russia of the Dnieper, where they are very numerous and exercise an important influence on public affairs, and those of Central Europe, and in general of Catholic or mixed Catholic countries, where they have had to struggle through so many centuries against religious intolerance. ”

“ Statistics, however, are liable to another error; in most cases the religion of the suicide is not registered, and the column of the unknown always predominates over the others. It is sufficient to cite the Prussian statistics of the two years 1871-'72, in which, out of 5,673 registered suicides, quite 3,703 (65 per cent.) can give no answer to the question of the religion professed by the suicides. Nevertheless, we have been able to ascertain the frequency of suicide among individuals of different religions in thirty-seven countries, as our tables show. ”

“ The same thing happens with the Protestants of Baden, Würtemberg, and Austria, and in fact everywhere; notwithstanding that they form the minority, and in some cases a very considerable minority, the average of suicide is everywhere higher than that of the Catholics. If a numerical inferiority were to operate at the present time in reproducing the tendency to suicide, we should not find it, as we do, much more frequent among the Jews of Bavaria, and especially in Lower Franconia and the Archduchy of Austria, than among the Catholics, although they form hut a small fraction of the population. ”

“ But at the same time an attentive examination of facts does not altogether bear out Legoyt's conclusion; for we find that it is scarcely ever that minorities furnish the smallest contingent to the register of suicide. For example, in Lower Bavaria, where Protestants are barely 8100 of the population, we find one hundred and forty-eight suicides in a million among them, whereas among Catholics, who compose nine tenths of the population, the number of suicides amounts to hardly twenty-eight in a million. ”

“ So far from it, if we consider the aggregate of the various countries of Europe, and that at the latest statistical period, it is easy to perceive that, where religious toleration has made more way, minorities begin to approximate the general average of their religion, the moral coercion of which Legoyt speaks is fast disappearing, and the unmixed influence of religion begins to tell with full force. ”

“ According to Legoyt, suicide more rarely occurs in those persuasions which are numerically weak, because the struggle with the hostility and intolerance of the population in the midst of whom they live exercises on them a sort of moral coercion, making them desirous to avoid the harsh judgment held over them. ”

“ In Brandenburg, where the Catholics are scarcely 3100 of the population, they show a threefold greater inclination for suicide than in Saxony, where they form half the population. And in Austria the Catholics, although in a minority in Galicia, Buckowina, the Military Frontiers, and Transylvania, yet show a greater tendency to suicide than either Greeks, Uniates, or Jews. ”

“ Jews are in general more subject to mental alienation than either Catholics or Protestants. In Bavaria, for instance, we find one insane in every 908 Catholic inhabitants, in every 967 Protestants, and every 514 Jews. In Hanover the reports give respectively one in 527 Catholics, in 641 Protestants, and in every 337 Jews. In Würtemberg one in every 2,006 Catholics, in 2,022 Protestants, and in 1,544 Jews; and in Denmark in like manner, while there is one insane person in every 1,750 among the Jewish population, there is one in every 2,000 of other religions. ”

“ In countries of mixed religions, then, the inclination toward suicide diminishes in direct ratio to the predominance of Catholicism. Looking at the aggregate of statistics collected by us for the most recent years, it is inferred that the frequency of suicide is, in states of Catholic religion, on an average of 58 per million ”

“ It is obvious that a great difference generally exists between Catholic and Protestant countries only, not between the Catholic and Protestant inhabitants of the same country. Where the tendency to suicide is great among the latter, it will be found to be also high among the former, as may be observed from the statistics already quoted of Baden, Würtemberg, Franconia, Galicia, Bavaria, etc. ”

“ Protestantism in the German states further exercises this exciting influence on the cerebral functions in yet another manner: it originated those philosophical systems which are based on the naturalistic conception of human existence, and put forward the view that the life of the individual is but a simple function of a great whole. ”

“ These philosophical ideas are harmless enough to strong minds and those stored with a fit provision of scientific culture, but in the democratic atmosphere of our times the heart is not educated pari passu. The religious apathy with which the present generation is afflicted does not arise from a reasoned inquiry into the laws of nature or a scientific appreciation of its phenomena ”

“ The inferiority in numbers of the Greeks is most apparent in Transylvania, where the Catholics occupy the first place, followed by the Uniates, then by the Lutherans and Calvinists, and lastly, at a long interval, by the United or non-united Greeks. The peculiar position occupied by Jews in relation to Catholics deserves attentive investigation. ”